Dave Winer, 56, is a visiting scholar at NYU's Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute and editor of the Scripting News weblog. He pioneered the development of weblogs, syndication (RSS), podcasting, outlining, and web content management software; former contributing editor at Wired Magazine, research fellow at Harvard Law School, entrepreneur, and investor in web media companies. A native New Yorker, he received a Master's in Computer Science from the University of Wisconsin, a Bachelor's in Mathematics from Tulane University and currently lives in New York City.

"RSS was born in 1997 out of the confluence of Dave Winer's 'Really Simple Syndication' technology, used to push out blog updates, and Netscape's 'Rich Site Summary', which allowed users to create custom Netscape home pages with regularly updated data flows." - Tim O'Reilly.

I admit, you'd have to have jumped through some pretty ridiculous hoops to get Blork running on your server at this stage. It'll get much easier, I hope (and pretty much expect, but don't want to tempt fate). But I see in my readout that there are probably a handful of folks doing exactly that. Nice to see.

Anyway, if you're one of those hale and hearty souls, you now have a new feature. A very sweet little popup window that does your posting for you. It should be possible to make this much faster, because it's doing so much less than the original UI did (which still works, btw).

I'm reaching closure on a bunch of stuff this summer, very slowly (it is summer after all, and the weather has been spectacularly nice here in the east). I hope to have a new EC2 for Poets soon. And a new easy-to-install River of News, suitable for J-school classes, or even high school. I will offer support to teachers who want to give it a try with their classes. You don't have to be at NYU.

And I have a new identity API coming any day now. It'll be nice to get that finalized and out there.

2. He also says that political manipulation of the economy is treason.

Let's put 1 and 2 together.

If #2 is true, I know a few Repubs who are on their way to the gallows.

And if the Repubs are serious about #1, then they shouldn't block a stimulus program, a big one, one that's designed to create lots of jobs. The world wants to invest in the US with no interest. We're too damn stupid, net-net, to take the money.

The President can say to the people "I want to throw y'all a lifeline, but these assholes keep trying to stop me." It wouldn't exactly be true, because the President has been acting more like a Republican than a good FDR-style Democrat, which is what we desperately need right now. But better late than never. And our economy really can't wait until 2013 for a stimulus. And if god forbid a Repub gets elected, we'd have to wait until 2017 for a stimulus. Why do I think that might be too late?

And the President probably shouldn't use the word assholes to describe Republicans, but I bet most Americans would agree with the characterization.

Anyway come on Repubs, let the President try to give the economy a big push, and avoid trial for treason. Now, not later. Then if it doesn't work (as you are sure it won't) you can throw a big party at the Repub Nat Conv.